Are you being serious about criticising theinquirer.net for saying that about GMT?
Hilarious. That is like criticising the Onion on bad grammer. The site is full of puns man. That is their whole model. They have good content and up to date information, but they are a pun site. Not every news site has to be a site that sits there looking you straight in the eyes, giving you the news, all serious like. It would like trying to watch CNN for every single news story that ever existed. Do you want to do that?
They are a pun site. That is their attraction and why people read their site. Get over it man.
Then maybe it is YOU who did not read his parent's post.
I doubt you would have typed anything you did if you had. And if so that is just plain silly. Him being from canada has nothing to do with, and changes nothing, about my origional post.
The US is actually known for slaves moreso than china for one thing.
The US economy isn't really occuring in a vacume as you implied. In fact its success is in large part a product of leeching on the global economy. The East being a huge part of that global economy. Without countries like China to suck up our cheap labor requirements, or guaranteeing us a buyout of our national debt, do you really thing the US would be doing anything economically right now? When a countries economy is doing well then it must be doing well against someone else's. Otherwise there would be no comparrison. There is no bottomless pit of money anywhere in the US. you cannot create wealth out of nothing.
The point is that you tried to make it look like you are all high and mighty. Anc China is a slavery country. They are horrible. They possibly couldn't have an economy worth a shit. They obviously slingshot off our economy. Obviously they would be nowhere without us. Obviously.. A M E R I C A...... Fuck Yea!
Yeah, the US is a real beacon of freedom and fairness. Oh, no, wait - The US actually has a long, brutal history of tyranny and oppression, with a history of "slaves" somewhat like that of the East in its worst moments. Moralizing about that is, quite simply, remarkable.
The US's current economic wealth is of course slingshotting on the backs of the East - it hardly occurring in a vacuum.
China 8x the number of people over more land than the US - saying we're "worse" is lame given that the "per capita" consumption is largely the creation of resource wealth for the world.
Of course the US is cleaning up, as all economies do when they become more mature - suddenly living in a shithole doesn't seem as appealing, and you start to want to have clean air and clean cities. Just look at the industrialization of London, England as a great example of this.
When is the last time you took an ipod back to the store you bought it at? You must be remembering when you could take anything back.. back in the 80's and 90's. The last time apple took an opend box product back because it was scratches was when hell froze over.
"I'd be tempted to disagree. It (arguably) has the best design of any available player and it's definitely the easiest to use."
Ok then I am going to argue. I just bought a SanDisk Sansa mp3 player which is 10x easier to use. It's also cheaper. The Creative players also have this quality. And the old Rio's outpaced apple in ease of use far before apple even made ipods. The iPod ease of use comes from the fact that everything is hidden in a menu. Wow, so easy to use while you are driving or running.
"The marketing buzz and the entire iPod 'image' have spawned from those qualities, not the other way around"
This is also incorrect, moreso than the previous part of your post because it can be disproven and isn't argueable. The marketing buzz came from apple, not the ease of use and style of the player. The iPod didn't spread due to word of mouth, it spread because it was on TV. It was on TV over and over and over and over again with one simple message. The name "Apple" stamped at the end of every TV Commercial is what spawned the notion that it was easy to use, not the other way around.
I doubt very seriously that you have used enough players to know which are simpler to use, which have quicker functions, and which take longer to do certain functions. My guess is that you tried an iPod and your friends [insert player here] and you didn't like it because you already had an iPod which you spent XXX dollars on and all your friends have one so it MUST BE BETTER.
You said... " You could switch to DSL, where you could get whatever provider you liked."
In reply to this, I was simply stating that when getting DSL, it is no longer possible with many telco's to get whoever you want to provide your DSL. Now it is normally only the telco who will let you get DSL through them only.
"TELL ME WHAT THE ORIGINAL iMAC IS MOST FAMOUS FOR.(THAT WOULD BE "INTRODUCING" USB AND REMOVING THE FLOPPY DRIVE. MOST PEOPLE USE DESKTOP SYSTEMS, NOT NOTEBOOKS"
The origional iMac is famous for being an all in one unit with cute colors. It was known for not being a beige box. It was known as the comeback of Steve Jobbs. The fact it was USB only and had no floppy just made many mac fanatics(like yourself) pissed off. The origional iMac is also known for its inconsistant stability and was plagued by unreliable and failing hardware (most noteably dead mobtherboards and power units). Sure, the iMac came with USB and no floppy. But it has nothing to do with its popularity.
"MEANT THAT IF THEY WERE NOT REMOVED, PERHAPS IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE CONSUMER QUITE A CONSIDERABLE AMMOUNT OF TIME LONGER TO START COMMON USAGE."
It has already taken the consumer quite a long time to start common usage of the USB flash drive. Flash memory shortages have always been a problem with the common usage of USB drives, and it is what has kept the flash drive prices so high as to exclude the average PC user up until last year. USB Flash drives didn't come into popular usage until after USB2.0 was available in the mainstream computer market. This happened SEVERAL YEARS after the iMac came out. Not to mention that even IF a large portion of apple users were flocking to USB drives that it made them popular. You see, at the time (and much so even today) Apple's userbase was so small it couldn't even scuff the flash memory market.
You can see things the way you want to see them. From your Apple fanboy perspective, I can see how you might believe that everything Apple does turns the whole industry upside down. But the facts are simply reversed from your supposed reality. Apple is a small time player. They typically see what is working and embrace it. They typically do a good job of it (lately anyway) But they certaintly are no longer industry changers and are not very big into innovation. Just popularizing products which they fell are underrated (ie, the ipod was a popularization of the several HDD MP3 players already out on the market)
I hope you can get some help soon. I have a feeling that your keyboard might catch on fire if you continue your zealous flaming on slashdot for much longer. Not to mention the permanent mental problems you will probably get after experiencing rage in such high magnitudes twards me. Someone on a web forum which probably lives thousands of miles from you and thus should have little to no affect on you directly.
"OH WAIT! Apple also "introduced" USB! How could we forget!?"
Actually, Apple didn't introduce USB. The closest you can say they "introduced" usb is that they moved their keyboard to USB before most other manufacturers. But they certaintly didn't introduct USB, and they DEFINATELY weren't the first with USB in their consumer systems.
"then removing the drive once it got too small for everyday usage, was that not risky financially?"
There were PLENTY of manufacturers who removed the floppy on their systems before apple. Namely, the huge market for laptops which was at the time already significantly more machines than apple was currently shipping through their entire product line.
" But Im glad that someone had the COURAGE to remove that old drive, it prompted us onto USB flash drives.."
You couldn't be farther from the truth. Apple may have had something to do with usb flash drive popularity. But apple CERTAINTLY didn't prompt them into existance.
Wow, being an apple fanboy must really suck. IMO it sux to be so wrong so often. But I guess that is just a way of life for people like you.
I would also like to point out that most demos which are showing the bose speakers winning on "tiny" speakers have no bass. Most are a jazz tune with lots of symbols and a horn. Those Bose speakers are really good at the high end, but their mids and lows are very loose and inprecise. That is how the sound is "so good out of those tiny speakers"
The point is that there is no speaker that is "tiny" which can accurately reproduce the mids and lows with precision. Bose doesnt' do magic in their setup, they just use fancy marketing tricks and have a good reputation at the upper half of the low end on music with no bass.
If your paying 69$ for a logitech 5.1 system and bitching about the quality you are either an idiot or you are picky.
Logitech makes probably the best (sounding) speakers in their price range. Of course an amp with speakersystem for 69$ isn't going to sound super extreme high quality. Try the Z-5500's if you want something that is going to sound great. Or, get some Klipshe speakers if you want the top end. Or, invest in a quality amplifier and discrete speaker system if you really want some awesome sound.. But bitching about Logitech's quality, when they beat pretty much anyone out there in the pricerange, is pretty silly.
For $69, the x-530's are as good as you are going to find anywhere. You will probably find them for 49 or 59 in some places on sale. And they are better than anything in previous years available in that price range.
If you want a step up, try out the 2.1 z-2300's for around $110-$120
Yea, because we all know that monster cables are the biggest scam since Enron?
Please, trying to defend someone who uses monster cables is a pretty ridiculous way to defend against the parent's post. Moster cables are a rip. And they aren't any better than other cheaper brands (such as belkin's pureAV) which are about 1/10th the price.
"But the other fact that needs to be considered is that public transit is not nearly as well funded in the US as it is in Europe and elsewhere. This, in combination with the ruralized nature of many states, creates a situation where a pretty significant amount of fuel consumption is necessary."
Finally, an excuse to bring back the small business retailers and suppliers in America. The past low gas prices have subsidised large retail chains like walmart, bestbuy, and blockbuster for decades. These subsidies have been at the expense of small businesses who are trying to sell to their local communities but can't afford to.
With the higher price of gas, I can expect the local corner store to be doing more business (their higher prices aren't as bad now that you have to pay 5-10$ to drive to the nearest walmart)
I predict a comeback of mom and pop shops. I predict that big retail chains will have to cope with higher gas prices, and they will likely be hurt the most. The small time corner stores are more economically sound and also more environmentally friendly. They are also more convenient. Now with higher gas prices, their prices will not be so bad when compared to walmart.
"I think typing "I, for one" is redundant and annoying. Stop it."
BTW: when someone says "for one" after "I" he is typically implying that there are other people who he is referring to, and he is just one of them. So while it may be redundant in that it repeats the implicit singular noun, its implications run much deeper and the true meaning of the sentence would not be the same without the "for one" part.
It does NOT matter that apple can give you extra rights beyond what you have already. The point is that they can TAKE away whatever they want, AFTER you bought it, WITHOUT making a new agreement with you.
Period.
There is no point in arguing the other way. This does not show bias. This shows that you do not understand the point of the article.
I don't really know... But I imagine that it is faster than a default Debian KDE because they have paid programers tweaking their desktop. They both turn on eye candy (such as AA Fonts, transparency, etc.) but also use all the known tweaks in the KDE engine to boost performance...
Since it ships with the nvidia drivers (won't help on your laptop probably) in most people's cases, the Linspire system would likely be faster by default.. though I don't know if it would be faster than a professionally-tweaked ubuntu or debian system...
Linspire is a Debian based distrubtion using KDE as the desktop environment. It's packabe management system uses one just like debians. But it has the click-n-run shopping site which lets you shop for a program, pay for it, and then download and install it all automatically... just like a debian package would. It then helps you configure the software if it is needed. So basically they have a nice GUI frontend to apt-get and the repository.
The nice thing about Linspire is that it comes with all the extras which you need in a linux box but you can't get by default: NVidia drivers, DVD Player software, and other important proprietary systems which are not available under the GPL or other free license.
I think the Click n Run is the most innovative thing too. It is like shopping amazon.com for software, only you click it and its ready to run right there.. Like online shopping only you instantly have it installed when you buy it. No hard setup processes needed (all automatic just like debian)
Linspire also changes a default debian and KDE desktop by making all the menus more manageable (like the start menu has categories and names of programs which are easy to understand like "text editor" rather than "Kate" or "word Processor" or "photo editor"... It also cleans up the icons on a default KDE install and makes sure that AA fonts and all the eye candy is turned on. It is just generally a more polished desktop system for people who don't want to have to learn all new terminology when they switch computer systems.
The electron double slit experiments have all sown that even a narrow beam of electrons (ie, one at a time passing through) exhibit wave interfearance, which causes unpredictable position of said electron.
You probably havent seen the wave interfearance of an electron or had it shown to you but it is a very very basic experiment which can show that you cannot predict the path of an electron, only its possible paths with their respective probabilities.
As the above poster has said, he thinks taht one day we will be able to understand enough about quantum physics to make these predictions. He may be right. But that is a lot of faith to put into something that has been studied for a hundred years and yet still nobody has even a theory of prediction which is generally accepted.
How could you be a true believer in determinism with what we know now about quantum physics?
There is almost no evidence of determinism in any walk of life. The bible, Science, and day to day experiences. People are unpredictable and so is quantum reality (which creates the lives we see). Even the philosopher would normally disagree with determinism.
Now, if they come back and say they can predict quantum reality determinately, then you might be on to something. Until then I find it hard for anyone to believe in any form of determinism.
"Actually, it would be due to generous amounts of sudden decelleration. I'd be very surprised if any of them experienced more gravity than you or I."
You had it right the first time.. From an enclosed chamber such as a laptop hard drive, one knows no difference between being dropped, or being exposed to a black hole somewhere in the relatively near surroundings.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you being serious about criticising theinquirer.net for saying that about GMT?
Hilarious. That is like criticising the Onion on bad grammer. The site is full of puns man. That is their whole model. They have good content and up to date information, but they are a pun site. Not every news site has to be a site that sits there looking you straight in the eyes, giving you the news, all serious like. It would like trying to watch CNN for every single news story that ever existed. Do you want to do that?
They are a pun site. That is their attraction and why people read their site. Get over it man.
Then maybe it is YOU who did not read his parent's post.
I doubt you would have typed anything you did if you had. And if so that is just plain silly. Him being from canada has nothing to do with, and changes nothing, about my origional post.
Are you just trolling? Lets see:
The US is actually known for slaves moreso than china for one thing.
The US economy isn't really occuring in a vacume as you implied. In fact its success is in large part a product of leeching on the global economy. The East being a huge part of that global economy. Without countries like China to suck up our cheap labor requirements, or guaranteeing us a buyout of our national debt, do you really thing the US would be doing anything economically right now? When a countries economy is doing well then it must be doing well against someone else's. Otherwise there would be no comparrison. There is no bottomless pit of money anywhere in the US. you cannot create wealth out of nothing.
The point is that you tried to make it look like you are all high and mighty. Anc China is a slavery country. They are horrible. They possibly couldn't have an economy worth a shit. They obviously slingshot off our economy. Obviously they would be nowhere without us. Obviously.. A M E R I C A...... Fuck Yea!
That is what you sound like.
Yeah, the US is a real beacon of freedom and fairness. Oh, no, wait - The US actually has a long, brutal history of tyranny and oppression, with a history of "slaves" somewhat like that of the East in its worst moments. Moralizing about that is, quite simply, remarkable.
The US's current economic wealth is of course slingshotting on the backs of the East - it hardly occurring in a vacuum.
China 8x the number of people over more land than the US - saying we're "worse" is lame given that the "per capita" consumption is largely the creation of resource wealth for the world.
Of course the US is cleaning up, as all economies do when they become more mature - suddenly living in a shithole doesn't seem as appealing, and you start to want to have clean air and clean cities. Just look at the industrialization of London, England as a great example of this.
Maybe you are thinking of Ubuntu?
Just a thought. Maybe you didn't realise that Kubuntu is just a spin off of Ubuntu.
Sweet, I posted this in a previous thread
Timely case mod and sharp looking too!
Maybe with those centrino drivers we can get this thing running wireless in linux:
Centrino pumpkin pc
I think this is a better halloween challenge: the Pumpkin PC
look how awesome the fans look in the eyes and system just overall is top notch.
When is the last time you took an ipod back to the store you bought it at? You must be remembering when you could take anything back.. back in the 80's and 90's. The last time apple took an opend box product back because it was scratches was when hell froze over.
"I'd be tempted to disagree. It (arguably) has the best design of any available player and it's definitely the easiest to use."
Ok then I am going to argue. I just bought a SanDisk Sansa mp3 player which is 10x easier to use. It's also cheaper. The Creative players also have this quality. And the old Rio's outpaced apple in ease of use far before apple even made ipods. The iPod ease of use comes from the fact that everything is hidden in a menu. Wow, so easy to use while you are driving or running.
"The marketing buzz and the entire iPod 'image' have spawned from those qualities, not the other way around"
This is also incorrect, moreso than the previous part of your post because it can be disproven and isn't argueable. The marketing buzz came from apple, not the ease of use and style of the player. The iPod didn't spread due to word of mouth, it spread because it was on TV. It was on TV over and over and over and over again with one simple message. The name "Apple" stamped at the end of every TV Commercial is what spawned the notion that it was easy to use, not the other way around.
I doubt very seriously that you have used enough players to know which are simpler to use, which have quicker functions, and which take longer to do certain functions. My guess is that you tried an iPod and your friends [insert player here] and you didn't like it because you already had an iPod which you spent XXX dollars on and all your friends have one so it MUST BE BETTER.
You said... " You could switch to DSL, where you could get whatever provider you liked."
In reply to this, I was simply stating that when getting DSL, it is no longer possible with many telco's to get whoever you want to provide your DSL. Now it is normally only the telco who will let you get DSL through them only.
Actually, Federal law now states that Telecoms are not required to share their lines with 3rd parties to help them compete with the cable co's.
Tuff world we live in. Watch all the 3rd parties drop like flys in the near future.
Wow, you have a temper...
"TELL ME WHAT THE ORIGINAL iMAC IS MOST FAMOUS FOR.(THAT WOULD BE "INTRODUCING" USB AND REMOVING THE FLOPPY DRIVE. MOST PEOPLE USE DESKTOP SYSTEMS, NOT NOTEBOOKS"
The origional iMac is famous for being an all in one unit with cute colors. It was known for not being a beige box. It was known as the comeback of Steve Jobbs. The fact it was USB only and had no floppy just made many mac fanatics(like yourself) pissed off. The origional iMac is also known for its inconsistant stability and was plagued by unreliable and failing hardware (most noteably dead mobtherboards and power units). Sure, the iMac came with USB and no floppy. But it has nothing to do with its popularity.
"MEANT THAT IF THEY WERE NOT REMOVED, PERHAPS IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE CONSUMER QUITE A CONSIDERABLE AMMOUNT OF TIME LONGER TO START COMMON USAGE."
It has already taken the consumer quite a long time to start common usage of the USB flash drive. Flash memory shortages have always been a problem with the common usage of USB drives, and it is what has kept the flash drive prices so high as to exclude the average PC user up until last year. USB Flash drives didn't come into popular usage until after USB2.0 was available in the mainstream computer market. This happened SEVERAL YEARS after the iMac came out. Not to mention that even IF a large portion of apple users were flocking to USB drives that it made them popular. You see, at the time (and much so even today) Apple's userbase was so small it couldn't even scuff the flash memory market.
You can see things the way you want to see them. From your Apple fanboy perspective, I can see how you might believe that everything Apple does turns the whole industry upside down. But the facts are simply reversed from your supposed reality. Apple is a small time player. They typically see what is working and embrace it. They typically do a good job of it (lately anyway) But they certaintly are no longer industry changers and are not very big into innovation. Just popularizing products which they fell are underrated (ie, the ipod was a popularization of the several HDD MP3 players already out on the market)
I hope you can get some help soon. I have a feeling that your keyboard might catch on fire if you continue your zealous flaming on slashdot for much longer. Not to mention the permanent mental problems you will probably get after experiencing rage in such high magnitudes twards me. Someone on a web forum which probably lives thousands of miles from you and thus should have little to no affect on you directly.
"OH WAIT! Apple also "introduced" USB! How could we forget!?"
Actually, Apple didn't introduce USB. The closest you can say they "introduced" usb is that they moved their keyboard to USB before most other manufacturers. But they certaintly didn't introduct USB, and they DEFINATELY weren't the first with USB in their consumer systems.
"then removing the drive once it got too small for everyday usage, was that not risky financially?"
There were PLENTY of manufacturers who removed the floppy on their systems before apple. Namely, the huge market for laptops which was at the time already significantly more machines than apple was currently shipping through their entire product line.
" But Im glad that someone had the COURAGE to remove that old drive, it prompted us onto USB flash drives.."
You couldn't be farther from the truth. Apple may have had something to do with usb flash drive popularity. But apple CERTAINTLY didn't prompt them into existance.
Wow, being an apple fanboy must really suck. IMO it sux to be so wrong so often. But I guess that is just a way of life for people like you.
I would also like to point out that most demos which are showing the bose speakers winning on "tiny" speakers have no bass. Most are a jazz tune with lots of symbols and a horn. Those Bose speakers are really good at the high end, but their mids and lows are very loose and inprecise. That is how the sound is "so good out of those tiny speakers"
The point is that there is no speaker that is "tiny" which can accurately reproduce the mids and lows with precision. Bose doesnt' do magic in their setup, they just use fancy marketing tricks and have a good reputation at the upper half of the low end on music with no bass.
If your paying 69$ for a logitech 5.1 system and bitching about the quality you are either an idiot or you are picky.
Logitech makes probably the best (sounding) speakers in their price range. Of course an amp with speakersystem for 69$ isn't going to sound super extreme high quality. Try the Z-5500's if you want something that is going to sound great. Or, get some Klipshe speakers if you want the top end. Or, invest in a quality amplifier and discrete speaker system if you really want some awesome sound.. But bitching about Logitech's quality, when they beat pretty much anyone out there in the pricerange, is pretty silly.
For $69, the x-530's are as good as you are going to find anywhere. You will probably find them for 49 or 59 in some places on sale. And they are better than anything in previous years available in that price range.
If you want a step up, try out the 2.1 z-2300's for around $110-$120
Yea, because we all know that monster cables are the biggest scam since Enron?
Please, trying to defend someone who uses monster cables is a pretty ridiculous way to defend against the parent's post. Moster cables are a rip. And they aren't any better than other cheaper brands (such as belkin's pureAV) which are about 1/10th the price.
"But the other fact that needs to be considered is that public transit is not nearly as well funded in the US as it is in Europe and elsewhere. This, in combination with the ruralized nature of many states, creates a situation where a pretty significant amount of fuel consumption is necessary."
Finally, an excuse to bring back the small business retailers and suppliers in America. The past low gas prices have subsidised large retail chains like walmart, bestbuy, and blockbuster for decades. These subsidies have been at the expense of small businesses who are trying to sell to their local communities but can't afford to.
With the higher price of gas, I can expect the local corner store to be doing more business (their higher prices aren't as bad now that you have to pay 5-10$ to drive to the nearest walmart)
I predict a comeback of mom and pop shops. I predict that big retail chains will have to cope with higher gas prices, and they will likely be hurt the most. The small time corner stores are more economically sound and also more environmentally friendly. They are also more convenient. Now with higher gas prices, their prices will not be so bad when compared to walmart.
"I think typing "I, for one" is redundant and annoying. Stop it."
BTW: when someone says "for one" after "I" he is typically implying that there are other people who he is referring to, and he is just one of them. So while it may be redundant in that it repeats the implicit singular noun, its implications run much deeper and the true meaning of the sentence would not be the same without the "for one" part.
Your argument is simply WRONG.
It does NOT matter that apple can give you extra rights beyond what you have already. The point is that they can TAKE away whatever they want, AFTER you bought it, WITHOUT making a new agreement with you.
Period.
There is no point in arguing the other way. This does not show bias. This shows that you do not understand the point of the article.
I don't really know... But I imagine that it is faster than a default Debian KDE because they have paid programers tweaking their desktop. They both turn on eye candy (such as AA Fonts, transparency, etc.) but also use all the known tweaks in the KDE engine to boost performance...
Since it ships with the nvidia drivers (won't help on your laptop probably) in most people's cases, the Linspire system would likely be faster by default.. though I don't know if it would be faster than a professionally-tweaked ubuntu or debian system...
I don't use it but I can comment on it.
Linspire is a Debian based distrubtion using KDE as the desktop environment. It's packabe management system uses one just like debians. But it has the click-n-run shopping site which lets you shop for a program, pay for it, and then download and install it all automatically... just like a debian package would. It then helps you configure the software if it is needed. So basically they have a nice GUI frontend to apt-get and the repository.
The nice thing about Linspire is that it comes with all the extras which you need in a linux box but you can't get by default: NVidia drivers, DVD Player software, and other important proprietary systems which are not available under the GPL or other free license.
I think the Click n Run is the most innovative thing too. It is like shopping amazon.com for software, only you click it and its ready to run right there.. Like online shopping only you instantly have it installed when you buy it. No hard setup processes needed (all automatic just like debian)
Linspire also changes a default debian and KDE desktop by making all the menus more manageable (like the start menu has categories and names of programs which are easy to understand like "text editor" rather than "Kate" or "word Processor" or "photo editor"... It also cleans up the icons on a default KDE install and makes sure that AA fonts and all the eye candy is turned on. It is just generally a more polished desktop system for people who don't want to have to learn all new terminology when they switch computer systems.
The electron double slit experiments have all sown that even a narrow beam of electrons (ie, one at a time passing through) exhibit wave interfearance, which causes unpredictable position of said electron.
You probably havent seen the wave interfearance of an electron or had it shown to you but it is a very very basic experiment which can show that you cannot predict the path of an electron, only its possible paths with their respective probabilities.
As the above poster has said, he thinks taht one day we will be able to understand enough about quantum physics to make these predictions. He may be right. But that is a lot of faith to put into something that has been studied for a hundred years and yet still nobody has even a theory of prediction which is generally accepted.
How could you be a true believer in determinism with what we know now about quantum physics?
There is almost no evidence of determinism in any walk of life. The bible, Science, and day to day experiences. People are unpredictable and so is quantum reality (which creates the lives we see). Even the philosopher would normally disagree with determinism.
Now, if they come back and say they can predict quantum reality determinately, then you might be on to something. Until then I find it hard for anyone to believe in any form of determinism.
"Actually, it would be due to generous amounts of sudden decelleration. I'd be very surprised if any of them experienced more gravity than you or I."
You had it right the first time.. From an enclosed chamber such as a laptop hard drive, one knows no difference between being dropped, or being exposed to a black hole somewhere in the relatively near surroundings.